Experiment in restricting goverment access to web sites

I first became concerned about government mining and data collection > a year ago when we learned that the Department of Homeland Security (which, incidentally, is a literal translation of the full German name of the hated East German Stasi) had contracted with General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems to scan social media for evidence of discontent with government policies. This is a very dangerous step towards totalitarianism.

More recently we’ve learned that the IRS plans to mine social media for information about taxpayers. When the news became public, they attempted to deny it, but the word (and the IRS’ own documentation) is out.

About the same time ATF (one of the worst law enforcement agencies ever, although the CBP has given them some stiff competition for that honor in recent years) published a request for proposals for social media data mining capabilities on the government procurement web site.

With those latest development, I felt it was time to kick my butt into gear and do my part to prevent this slide into totalitarian government. FedCopsis now running the beta version of my Stop Gov’t Waste & Block Gov’t Data Minersplug-in for WordPress. As of this evening, your access to this site is blocked if you are coming from:

DHS subnet

Treasury Dept. subnet (blocks IRS)

Justice Dept. subnet (blocks ATF)

Rapiscan (company that developed naked body scanners for DHS)

General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (DHS data miner)

Any host name ending in *.gov

Future versions of the plug-in will have additional blocking capabilities. For more information as it evolves, please visit www.govtwaste.org(on your own dime, of course).

If your access to this site is blocked, hopefully you’ll figure out why and find your way back on your own dime and on your own private internet connection.